Guild Wars 2

I stopped caring around the Dec 10th patch when they 100% completely ignored top players contstructive feedback about the IS change, and ignored everyone’s feedback on how awful Hard to Catch would be. Let’s not forget the bald-faced lie concerning the reason for the IS change too – because players were spending 5 init and steal/Inf sig to safe stomp, which made it OP….HA.

The real kicker was when Assassins Reward’s “35% healing power buff” worked out to be an additional 1HP per init spent per ONE HUNDRED healing power – that was sure worth being bumped up a tier.

You’ve already paid for the game though, so do what I Do – don’t ever give them a single red cent of real money again. If they show they can be trusted, I’ll reconsider my stance on spending real money in the gem store – they’ll learn or they’ll fail, its up to them.

@Geiir.7603 – Wildstar’s PvP is….. Spammy. I mean, try it yourself, but it’s nothing like this – what’s most infuriating is what a well designed base this game has, and how inexorably covered in complete kitten it’s become.

Phaeton.9582:

S/D acro thief had an advantageous matchup with dps medi guard pre-patch.

Might be worth considering how absurd that is too.

Because as we all know, the key metric for measuring balance in a team-fight centered game is how one specific spec of one specific class matches up against another specific spec of another specific class.

That’s why Anet killed Bunkers completely a year ago – Can you imagine how broken a class that could survive a 2 v 1 for an extended time would be in this game balanced around 1 v 1 matchups?

Insane.

manveruppd.7601:

Black Powder in its previous version was directly comparable to Well of Darkness
Let me restate, for emphasis: a weapon skill which costs the amount of initiative that you generate in 6" had almost as good functionality (1" less duration, slightly smaller radius) as a utility skill with a 60" recharge. I mean, be reasonable here, it was an obvious target for a nerf.

Good thing thief and necro have access to such similar traits, skills and weapons, with the same base hp to boot! Otherwise your comparison would be asinine and obviously pointless.

coglin.1867:

No, just no.

The last thing thieves need in PvP or WvW is UI changes that cater to them.

I mean I am with the idea of giving a visual cue of illuminating a stealthed player for the duration of the cast time of any skill they use from stealth. While we are at it, can we change backstabs cast time from 1/4 to 1/2 for this. Also we need to add a cast time to tactical strike, sneak attack, and steal is too strong traited, it definitely needs a cast visual to allow counter play. All of which illuminate you with a visual cue to your target, while you are in stealth, during the cast time, of each skills can actually be blocked or dodged.

We do that, and then I would be all for your idea.

It is sure says a lot when if your against allowing cue’s so others do not waste dodges, blocks, and what not, trying to guess when they will get hit. Yet you want to be catered to so that you wouldn’t accidentally waste your resources by trying to stealth……………………..

I feel as though your irrational hatred for the class has really diminished your ability to make sound, logical suggestions. Perhaps you should take a break from making suggestions concerning mechanics you don’t understand fully until you’ve worked through that.

If it’s ok for the game to have abilities that specifically target stealth, then it’s ok to have cues for when stealth has been specifically targeted.

Cam Ron.4170:

D/P is absolutely fine, just dont stomp anymore. S/D is clearly weaker and may just get completely overshadowed by D/P, or maybe I just need to l2p and adapt to changes better. Definitely not effective as i use to be yet (if ever). I haven’t played P/P enough to have an opinion of this set post-buff.

tl;dr: DP is fine
jury is out on S/D, definitely weaker, possibly viable

everything else as always been crap compared to these sets on PvP.

In WvW however, new trap runes + dire gear is absurd at the moment.

You don’t need to play P/P to understand that the “buff” did nothing to help the set, Anet very helpfully let you know the change would be pointless from the getgo because it’s not based on any of the issues P/P currently has.

D/P is still a functional set, it’s just that BP went from a skill that could be used defensively to a 6 init smoke field for stealth access and the occasional whirling axe.

The BP change feels unnecessary.

Anyone who knew anything knew you could still melee the thief from outside the circle , no matter where the thief stood – only bads stood in the circle and kept whiffing.

Yes, it hardcountered 3 out of 8 downstates – thieves do not get access to stability however (which hardcounters 5 out of 8 downstates), and it cost half a standard init bar, so it didn’t feel overwhelming IMO.

Previously, BP could be used strategically as more than just stealth access – now all it’s good for is stealth access. Considering the nerf, the skill should have gained something to compensate – lower Init cost, bigger radius, better damage on the skill, but no, it was simply renders Nigh useless for actually blinding a player.

Alot of the complaints in the last day stemmed from an introduced steal bug which caused it to miss when used with a skill that moved you (HS, LS) – it rendered alot of builds useless, as most builds have 35-50% of their traits dedicated to steal.

“Black powder near to useless now”

ftfy

Artaz.3819:

It was broken OP before …

In PvE you could use black powder spam and facetank/autoattack melee mobs of elite or below (or ranged mobs standing right next to them).

So fix it in PvE

In stomping, it was a guaranteed stomp as long as you weren’t range interrupted.

It was a guaranteed stomp on War/Engi/Necro. Ranger/Guard with a modicum of skill could time around the pulses, Ele/Thief/Mes didn’t care about it. Please have some idea what you’re talking about before commenting.

nekretaal.6485:

As long as thief has the best mobility, thief will be an essential part of every team, if not the best pvp class.

Stop 1v1 and look at the big picture.

Because thieves are so strong in team fights – it’s practically where they live!

[/sarcasm]

Mobility is strong, but being less effective then other classes when you get there makes your presence less important.

Yasha.5963:

I haven’t played d/p since the patch, am quite concerned about the heavy nerf to black powder though. How are you guys finding it?

The black powder nerf is a joke. Anyone can just stand in it and wreck you, because missing 1 swing every 2 seconds won’t help you live through whatever another player is throwing at you. The fact that it still costs 6 init is a slap in the face – it’s good for the blinding shot and stealth access for D/P, and that’s it.

This is a knee jerk reaction and should be treated as such, but it seems to me they’ve just taken everything that allowed thief to fill a particular niche, and parted it out to other classes.

Need instantaneous burst? Ele’s got that now, even though it was removed from thief when the BV->CnD->Steal with mug combo had every single step in it nerfed.

Need strong, quick burst with good pressure followup? Ranger’s got that now, without positional requirements(this part I’m actually not 100% sure on, correct me if I’m wrong), from range, with hard CC on the weapon it uses AND a pet to boot.

Even mobility – while thief is still the best at it (which forces every thief spec to run ShBow and SS btw), other classes are catching up to the point where thieves glaring weaknesses are no longer made up for by their access to mobility.

This would be fine if all the classes had similar access to defenses/condition removal/boons/base hp/general sustain/etc…… but they don’t. They’ve given great burst to classes that don’t start with the lowest base HP in the game, that Do have access to protection and stability, that get immune skills, that get hard CC on their weaponsets, and so on.

The point of this isn’t to bash those classes, but to question Anet’s design principles. When you designed thief, you decided they were going to have the lowest base HP. You decided they’d have no practical access to protection/stability/condition removal, poor access to regen with absolutely no reason to take Healing power, and no access to immune skills/blocks. You decided all of thieves defenses would have to be reactive, and then continue to nerf them over and over and over again.

What is it you want thieves to do? Move around the map quickly? What good is that when almost any class can match our burst while exceeding our sustain (which means they’ll win the fight), or just straight up out-sustain our damage, which you keep nerfing, all while buffing other classes damage?

Tl;dr: It just seems like Thieves have lost all the benefits associated with being a squishy class with poor sustain and all active defenses, all while watching most of those benefits go to classes that don’t have the same drawbacks.

Notes say the issue if fixed – hope thats the case

ok, It’s been a few hours now – we really should have seen an acknowledgement from Anet and an assurance this is being fixed by now.

jim.5380:

so basically this bug will go unnoticed and here comes the thief death/ dead weight on a team

I’m pretty sure they operate on PST, so lets give them a few hours at least to acknowledge the issue.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Panic Strike:
To me, this is a buff. Most people will clear the immobilize after about 2 seconds (except when they are all blown already, but you’re not going to keep a target from <50% health just to maximize this trait anyway). The shorter cooldown makes it a bit easier to know if your target is going to get immobilized or not.

Probably the only actual “Buff”, and even then it was a buff to your opponents as well. Less Immob uptime means it isn’t a death sentence to someone without a block/immob break up (which is fair), and in recompense you get 10s off the ICD.

Venomous Aura:
Definitely a buff for venom sharers. Concept is still the same though, which means venoms still can’t get real buffs, making them more viable as solo utilities.

A kitten with sprinkles still tastes like kitten when you’re forced to eat it. Thanks for the sprinkles I guess?

Black Powder:
No more guaranteed finishers on downed enemies. It’s easy enough to clear the blind now and use the anti-finish skill (fear, hammer, pull, whatever). If you have a smart opponent, stability (or sometimes portfinish) will be needed.

Also no more use for practical use for Black powder except as a single initial blind and smoke field. It’s not worth anywhere near 6 init anymore when players can just stand in it and whale on you, would probably be more balanced at 4 init. Remember when Anet buffed Weakness and then gutted thieves access to weakness? They keep steadily chipping away at out defenses. Now BP is a 6 init trap – D/P can’t stealth without it, and it can’t be effectively used as a melee defensive tool anymore. Since we don’t get protection/stability/good sustain options, you can’t eat big swings while players mindlessly stand in your BP as though it weren’t there (because as far as they’re concerned, it really isn’t)

Let’s also note that Anet decided thieves wouldn’t get access to immunes/protection/stability/reasonable sustain options and all their defensives would be active, so standing still for 4 seconds to stomp can be a death sentence in any sort of organized play.

I usually try not to jump on the “The sky is falling!” bandwagon after a patch, but this one feels particularly awful. It’ll take time to settle and really see the effects, but first impressions aren’t good.

Every burst build I meet has equal or better burst at range or insane sustain or both. Tanky builds don’t feel as onesided, though they generally last long enough for another player to mosey on over and turn it into a 2v1. I’ve tried D/P 60206, 06206 and 26006, as well as S/D 20066.

Black powder is now hideously overcosted, as it’s only good for a single blind and stealth access, all because standing outside a tiny circle was deemed too hard. The FS change is laughable.

Anet spent years chipping away at thief burst because it was just “too much for players to deal with”, then seem happy to give similar levels of burst to classes with access to real hard CC/immune skills/protection/stability/condition removal/much better sustain options.

Perhaps things will feel better once the Steal bug (trying to steal while executing any ability that moves you causes steal to miss and go on full cooldown) is fixed, or perhaps they’ve finally dropped thieves to the bottom of the barrel, but atm it feels silly to play a lowest HP/All active defenses class in this game when other classes can match your burst while also easily exceeding your sustain. Maybe in a year we’ll get the same treatment warrior got once they were finally fixed, or maybe a better balanced game will come along.

Here’s to hoping.

If you attempt to use Steal in the middle of the execution of a skill (Only certain skills cause this to happen 100% of the time it seems, FS and HS among them), steal completely misses and goes on full cooldown. Please fix.

If you attempt to use Steal in the middle of the execution of a skill (it appears as though it’s limited to skills that move you like HS or FS), steal completely misses and goes on full cooldown. Please fix.

sirrealist.1360:

1) “Invigorating Precision: Increased life steal from 5% to 8%.”
- As I understood it, IP heals you for a percentage of outgoing crit damage. They way they word it here, using the key phrase “life steal”, they are implying that you now do additional damage that is 8% of outgoing crit damage, and are also healed for that amount. I take it this is just poor wording on their part?

2) There is no mention of dagger now cleaving on 2 enemies.

Thoughts?

1) it wasn’t life steal before (afaik), doubt it is now
2) yes there was

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what these skills were. Thanks for the info!

Maugetarr.6823:

They have to take sharing into consideration with mantras and Aura’s as well, the thing is though there aren’t nearly as many traits that can all be taken simultaneously which turns the sharing into an overwhelming force if they were to be buffed at all. That’s why I thought that moving the traits so they interfered with each other would allow them to address them better for both group and solo play.

I’m not familiar with the exact mechanics in which mantra’s and Aura’s are shared. Could you explain please?

Narcarsis.5739:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

I never said it’s broken, i just said it’s completely useless for a thief as the class has no bundles by itself.
Also, on a much earlier iteration of the game, back in alpha, the steal skill worked as a bundle (just look at the thief steal video in the class page) thus the trait is NOT working as intended anymore, it’s just terribly outdated.

You don’t know what working as intended means, so I’m not going to waste my time. On a side note Improvisation is one of the strongest traits in the game.

Cheers,

Caed

I’m genuinely curious – why do you feel Improvisation is one of the strongest traits in the game?

NinjaEd.3946:

VA isn’t an issue, its the baseline of the venoms that really don’t have much going for them.

Yes, the baseline venoms are the problem.

Why haven’t baseline venoms been buffed?

VENOMOUS AURA.

You do understand that the issue is this – It’s extremely hard (probably approaching impossible) to design a Venom utility that is strong enough to be worth taking on it’s own WITHOUT it becoming ridiculously OP when you have the option of spreading that skill onto 5 other players/AI’s.

That is the heart of the issue – Anet cannot design venoms worth taking on their own when they have to be balanced with the possibility of that effect being applied 5 more times in mind.

It’s still extremely impractical when compared to infusion – the majority of your standard methods of entering stealth are going to give you 3s(4s with meld) of stealth. Blinding powder + smoke field And refuge are the only practical ways (I can think of atm) you’re ever going to get more init regen from Patience than from infusion.

Though I guess it’s possible to run both Infusion and Patience, I’d honestly never considered it in 2 years of playing because there’s just so many better (some practically necessary) options in SA if you’re going that deep in.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

They they have to rename the entire trait line as Revealed Arts. lol.

Or they could just keep calling it shadow arts because gaining revealed relies on being in stealth first.

On the contrary, I like the “While in stealth…” SA traits as is.

You liking them doesn’t make them good for the game, well designed, or fun to play with and against.

One of the biggest WvW complaints about thieves is “they can just sit in stealth to reset the fight/regen/etc”.

One of the biggest reasons SA is garbage in PvP is because you can’t contest points/contribute while in stealth and all of SA’s best traits give you an incentive to sit in stealth even after you’ve gotten into position using stealth.

Changing most of the “while in stealth” triggers to “While revealed” or “On entering stealth” or “when gaining revealed” allows the traitline to continue functioning as designed while killing the major gripes about the class in both PvP and WvW.

It also prevents the “Apply revealed” skills (WvW trap, Rangers, Engineers soon) from completely shutting down an entire traitline.

There should be no incentive to sit in stealth beyond its primary goal – getting into position. By giving an incentive to just sit in stealth so you can regen health/regen init (i’m not claiming anyone takes patience)/drop conditions, Anet has made the entire SA line boring to play as a thief (Subjective), infuriating to play against In WvW(Objective), and worthless in PvP(Objective).

Fiorrello.8126:

…this makes it feel to me that the class isnt finished. Like they are suppost to have options for leaving their second hand free but for whatever reason it never made it into the game and the dev’s just kind of forgot about it.

Its actually a little depressing that what looks to me to be a fairly large oversite managed to go 2 years without being corrected. I understand that it takes time to iron out all the bugs that a game this size will inherently have. But this isnt a bug fix, this is missing content.

Can’t tell if trolling or serious.

On the offhand chance you’re serious – the reason for this is because thieves are the only class with unique “Dual weild” skills. IE, Weapon X MH doesn’t have a set #3 skill – it’s #3 skill relies on what weapon is being held in the offhand. When you don’t have a weapon in the offhand, you don’t get a 4 and 5 skill, and the #3 skill is just based on whatever weapon is in your MH.

This was not an oversight. The class is not incomplete (In this regard at least). Working as intended.

NinjaEd.3946:

You can’t just throw things onto venoms and say “here are thou holy grail”, venoms aren’t meant for condition builds and their meant to be played as a somewhat invested build and not an extra utility. Unless they plan to add more skills (prolly 2016) they are meant for utility atm.

Well then they did a particularly terrible job at it. Considering how many traits you need to sink into Venoms to make them even halfway viable (which is a godawful return on all those traits you’re dedicating solely to venoms), and the things you have to sacrifice just to use a venom build (variety, stun breakers…or you know you could let your 5 major traits go to waste by taking a non venom utility), what we actually get when fully invested is absolute garbage.

Also ice drake doesn’t make sense stun breaking, it makes more sense to scrap this venom because it conflicts with devourer venom and is impossible to balance. There is no way to buff ice drake without making it OP because of how quickly condi duration + venomous aura would make it, and it sucks as it is now. Best they try something new for it.

There you go, you’ve found the issue; VENOMOUS AURA

It’s unfortunate that you don’t like the suggestions here, but there’s really no way around the fact that Venomous Aura is the culprit behind how worthless venoms currently are – however it’s changed, it is the thing that needs to be changed.

Maugetarr.6823:

Hey, at least we’re getting somewhere with discussion!

@evilapprentice: I like the general lines of your idea, but I have to agree a little with Sir Vincent. If we took something like spider venom, how exactly would we share a weaker version of poison? Maybe just not as long poison duration? Having venomous aura create an entirely different effect though could be the direction to go in though. Maybe upon activation you drop a combo field instead, say radius 240, 4-5 second duration.

With my change, Spider venom will be buffed. What’s holding back venoms at the moment is Venomous Aura – they can’t be very powerful as utilities on their own because they can be potentially shared with 5 people.

Assuming my suggestion was implemented, you could suddenly have Spider venom trigger 5 seconds of Poison, one 5s bleed and one 5s torment per application (I’m not suggesting this, just an example), and the shared “Land spider venom” could be 2 seconds of poison and torment (again, just an example).

The venom utilites would grow much more powerful because all of a sudden you’re not worried how OP they’d be when shared with 5 players.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

stof.9341:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That’s my point, we can debate the situation when stealth is great and when it isn’t. Yes, I agree that no contribution is coming from a stealth Thief, same with a Warrior who cannot attack and build up adrenaline due to confusion, thus they cannot cleanse the condition, so they have to find other ways to remove the condition when they are out of adrenaline and at low health.

Technically, a Warrior with Cleansing Ire also builds adrenaline just by getting hit.

That’s why I said “they have to find other ways to remove the condition” if that means taking hits to build adrenaline, sure why not, assuming they don’t die before that happens.

My point is, if Thief has a point where they are not contributing due to conditions, so does Warrior — they’re not god-like…yet — as well as other professions.

A Warrior Can attack while afflicted with confusion, they’ll just take damage – If that ends up building enough Adrenaline to drop those 10 stacks of bleed/torment, or poison, or burn, then it was worth it, and the option was still open to them. A thief Cannot attack while in stealth, or else they’ll lose stealth.

I’m not claiming Warrior is OP, I’m claiming that a thief’s condition removal options are horribly UP. I’d be happy if they swapped most of SA’s “While in stealth” traits to “While revealed” – it’d fix alot of problems players have in both WvW and PvP.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

stof.9341:

Shadow Step has 60s cooldown and is not only one of our stunbreaks but one of our major escape spell. And if you use the condition removal part of it, it isn’t an escape spell anymore.

3 conditions every 60s is hardly worth mentioning.

Confusion isn’t much of a problem because we are kind of good at waiting up that it passes by disengaging a little I suppose.

Warriors can remove 3 conditions every 8s provided they can get the adrenaline and their was supposed to be the class that has difficulties dealing with conditions!

That comment is misleading.

Warrior’s trait allows the Warrior to remove those conditions — not utility skills.

In comparison, you should look at Shadow’s Embrace — which is removing 2 conditions every stealth. You can also stealth back-to-back if you know how to do it to remove even more conditions.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t SE only removing 2 conditions per stealth if you’re at least 15 points into SA?

It’s also worth mentioning that to remove those conditions, you have to go into stealth and then stop contributing to the fight, lest you lose stealth and gain revealed – warriors are dropping conditions as they continue to contribute to the fight. Sitting in stealth also loses capture points, which is a big deal since the goal of PvP is to hold capture points.

I’m not saying that one is better than the other. I’m simply pointing out that comparing a trait to a utility skill is misleading.

Let’s say that the Thief goes into stealth for 4s and restealth after the 4s revealed, that equates to a removal of 4 conditions in the same time frame as the Warrior, but the Warrior only removes 3 conditions.

Whether the contribution to the fight is good or bad is debatable since stealthing can be a useless act or a necessary act that can save the Thief’s life.

I haven’t spec’d SA in forever so this might be off but by my math in 8s you’ve removed 3 conditions – 2 in the original 4s stealth, 1 when you restealth after the 4s revealed, which took 9 seconds (assuming you time everything perfectly)

Also, it’s not debatable whether or not your contributing to the fight – if you want to cleanse the number of conditions your claiming SE cleanses, you have to sit in stealth for a minimum amount of time not contributing to the fight, whereas a warrior simply needs to connect with their burst skill to activate CI. Whether or not hiding in stealth is the best course of action at the time for the thief is subjective to each situation, but it’s a fact that the thief isn’t contributing to the fight while they sit in stealth because by definition they can’t contribute without losing stealth (besides for an extremely limited number of utilities and CG, the latter which is being changed in the patch), the state which is allowing them to shed conditions.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

stof.9341:

Shadow Step has 60s cooldown and is not only one of our stunbreaks but one of our major escape spell. And if you use the condition removal part of it, it isn’t an escape spell anymore.

3 conditions every 60s is hardly worth mentioning.

Confusion isn’t much of a problem because we are kind of good at waiting up that it passes by disengaging a little I suppose.

Warriors can remove 3 conditions every 8s provided they can get the adrenaline and their was supposed to be the class that has difficulties dealing with conditions!

That comment is misleading.

Warrior’s trait allows the Warrior to remove those conditions — not utility skills.

In comparison, you should look at Shadow’s Embrace — which is removing 2 conditions every stealth. You can also stealth back-to-back if you know how to do it to remove even more conditions.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t SE only removing 2 conditions per stealth if you’re at least 15 points into SA?

It’s also worth mentioning that to remove those conditions, you have to go into stealth and then stop contributing to the fight, lest you lose stealth and gain revealed – warriors are dropping conditions as they continue to contribute to the fight. Sitting in stealth also loses capture points, which is a big deal since the goal of PvP is to hold capture points.

stof.9341:

evilapprentice.6379:

Here’s a suggestion that’s actually in the realm of possibilities – Disconnect the ability shared by Venomous Aura from the venom itself. Instead of Venomous aura directly copying a venom, it should instead trigger a unique ability based on the venom used.

Was thinking about a similar thing. Say, our venoms apply 2 conditions each. Well, with Venomous Aura, our friends would only apply one of the two conditions, or a weaker version (immobilize => cripple etc…)

Another simple option would be to double the number of venom charges and make venomous aura halve them again.

Eh, doubling the charges doesn’t help – they need to be redesigned to be worth taking on their own, because they’re currently designed to not be OP when shared with venomous aura – doubling the charges doesn’t help some venoms (Spiders, Ice drake), and makes other venoms potentially OP (Devourers, Basilisk). Doubling the charges also doesn’t work well with Leeching venoms or Skelk venom (at least without some additional redesigning)

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Idea for a Venom Rework: DELETE VENOMOUS AURA

Except that won’t happen (as you can see by all of our latest buffs), so we can keep throwing ideas at them until something sticks that makes venoms useful by themselves without being overwhelming with Venomous Aura.

The point is. To ever have any meaningful rework for venom, venomous aura needs to be deleted.

So instead of making suggestions to rework venoms, it is my belief that for every update they make for venom that we should respond with “DELETE VENOMOUS AURA”. Basically, instead of throwing ideas, we should only throw one idea, that is “DELETE VENOMOUS AURA”

Ok, here’s the thing: they won’t. So, assuming that it will be here for the duration of the existence of the game, how about commenting the other ideas here about the reduction in CD or the boosting of some effects. You know, addressing the ideas presented with constructive criticism (and you can even look at those as if venomous aura didn’t exist ).

They’re obviously never going to delete Venomous Aura – why anyone would even ask them to do so is beyond me.

Here’s a suggestion that’s actually in the realm of possibilities – Disconnect the ability shared by Venomous Aura from the venom itself. Instead of Venomous aura directly copying a venom, it should instead trigger a unique ability based on the venom used.

Example – Slotted with venomous aura, I use Spider Venom – an ability called “Land Spider Venom” is copied to up to 5 players in a 360 radius around me – “Land spider Venom” does something similar to Spider venom, but is not an exact copy of the ability.

There you go – now venoms can be powerful on their own, because the venom itself is disconnected from the ability that is shared.

CobOfCorn.6352:

I only play thief

No, you don’t, and I have proof. See below.

Instead of a cooldown, initiative can not be recovered for 5 or 10 seconds might work, so a thief would need to be careful but would still have options.

When thieves get a spammable weapon skill that has more than .5s of stun, more than .25s of daze, any kind of knockback/knockdown, and more than 1s of immobilize, you can penalize it however you like. Until then, stop complaining about how the initiative system works.

People pretend as though the init system is nothing but beneficial. If you played the class, you’d realize that one of the drawbacks to spammable weapon skills is that no weapon skill can have solid CC attached to them (except stealth skills which have an artifical CD with revealed). Let’s also remember that init is 1 pool shared between 2 weapons, where as every other class has at minimum 2 unique pools of CD’s.

This isn’t a complaint mind you – the init system certainly has its benefits, but it also has costs that most posters are blind to. I understand that OP made it a point to explain he didn’t know about thieves well enough to judge whether or not his idea was good – please don’t post changes to things you don’t understand. Bad players and trolls are just going to pick it up and run with it.

The following suggestion takes into account that in a previous post about last refuge, Anet clearly stated they wanted the skill to remain “Stealth based”.

As far as I recall (and it’s been a while, so someone please correct me if I’m wrong), mesmers have access to an ability called “Cloak” (I believe its on desperate decoy?). Cloak functions like stealth, except that you become invisible even if you have the revealed debuff.

Assuming all that is true, truly fixing Last Refuge is so stupidly simple I can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet. Have Last Refuge trigger “Cloak” instead of “Stealth”. Make sure that “Cloak” does not give access to stealth attacks or any of SA’s “In stealth” or “On stealth” triggers.

Viola, you’ve fixed Last refuge. Let’s run through a couple of scenarios and check.

What if LR triggers mid CnD? You get cloak, lose it when CnD connects, and gain stealth -The trait didn’t do much for you, but it didn’t kitten you over with revealed for no reason.

What if LR triggers mid HS? You get cloak, lose in when your HS connects, But do not gain revealed – The trait didn’t do much for you, but it didn’t kitten you over with revealed for no reason.

Not attacking at all and LR triggers? Great, you’ve got 3 seconds of Cloak to do with as you please.

Of course there are a few minor things to consider.

Cloak wouldn’t stack with stealth (it’s a different, weaker effect after all). This will likely kitten a few thieves off, but the skill is still massively better as Cloak then it is as Stealth. Additionally, you’d probably want to add a tiny buff to LR (500Hp heal or drop a condition or gain swiftness, something) considering Cloak won’t give access to stealth attacks or SA traits. You’d also have to figure out how to visually differentiate Cloak from stealth for the thief player. Minor inconveniences at best.

There you go, a Last Refuge that works. It won’t screw thieves over by gifting them with revealed right when they need stealth the most. It won’t force thieves to alter their playstyle to avoid getting revealed. It just works as intended.

BrunoBRS.5178:

lol at the people that thought thieves wanted cleave on dagger.

an unwanted, double edged buff is not what we’ve been asking for like, years now. we want venoms to be good of their own accord, without that stupid overreliance on venomous aura. we want traps to be fun and useful. we want P/P to get the same treatment warrior rifle is getting this patch (consistency between skills).

I absolutely love the Warrior rifle change. It’s documented proof that Anet doesn’t seem to care about thieves.

Warriors, the class with the broadest weapon selection, had the consistency issues addressed, giving them access to another weapon that is at minimum consistently designed.

Thief, the class with the narrowest weapon selection (inb4: attunements, kits), who have been begging for 2 years for P/P to be fixed are continually ignored. No, your constant tweaks to body shot have not fixed P/P. No, unload firing slightly faster will not fix P/P, and frankly it’s ridiculous that you think it would – it has a consistency issue like warrior rifle, Please fix it. Then we can focus on P/P’s extremely lackluster defensive skills (which are being nerfed this patch, for added hilarity)

Let’s also note that D/D also has a pretty glaring consistency issue. Though it’s far more functional than P/P, it’s ignored due to the fact that it’s underpowered compared to other choices, at least in part due to the dual skills uselessness in a power/crit spec (which what the rest of the weaponset is geared for)

P.S. – This isn’t a knock on warriors, just a comparison. Also, I’m talking PvP here, not WvW Or PvE.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i wouldn’t mind the nerfs to our strongest sets if they did something about everything that is clearly broken with thieves (most notably, P/P, venoms and traps). the worst part is seeing them trying to fix it, and then screaming “THAT WON’T EVER SOLVE THE PROBLEM” at the screen as they showcase yet another useless buff to venom share, ignoring the facts that it doesn’t come by default on venoms (no, i’m not asking venom aura to be baseline, i’m asking them to stop pretending it is), or trying really hard to make unload spam something good, when it doesn’t solve all the other problems with the set.

It’s gotten to the point where anything I might say about the Dev team that handles thief will get me infracted. There’s no forum acceptable way to describe their missteps when it comes to P/P and venoms, and how they’ve just plain ignored traps and D/D.

They keep nerfing stealth, blind and evade without adding any other survivability options – news flash Anet – YOU designed thieves without access to protection, blocks, immunities, competent condition cleansing, or stability (mentioning AE or daggerstorm at this point will make me question your experience with the class), YOU decided their defenses were going to be mostly active. If you want to turn us into a teleporting warrior clone, fine, but you need to deliver the requisite survivability buffs so we aren’t just free kills.

Some of the changes are so poorly designed it’s hard to believe they made it out of a brainstorming session, much less through QA and testing and into the game. 1s of stability when exiting stealth on the acro traitline? What is that good for? 1 Heartseeker? 5% of your critical damage returned to you as health? All it takes is a basic understanding of math to immediately see how inferior that is to executioner. Another 3% to IP or .5s to AE isn’t going to help – these aren’t traits on the cusp of being useful, they’re garbage – your data must say that. I understand your philosophy of “small tweaks” but something has to be sort of useful before a small tweak will do something for it.

alchemyst.2165:

Im gonna be honest, I don’t think its that big of a deal. And if we had Torment removal on those heals it’d probably be op. I mean, 4 condition cleanses? Especially on a 15 second heal.

You’re thinking of withdraw – that’s the 15s CD heal. HiS is 30s. Additionally, withdraw only removes movement impairing conditions, no damaging conditions. RFI is a stunbreaking utility with a 60s CD which also removes movement impairing conditions.

Also I thought that if you had all the DoT conditions with SA you could cure them all with HiS? I thought it cured the condis, and then one last condi. But I could be wrong, cus I don’t really pay attention to it.

Shadow’s embrace doesn’t count in PvP – you don’t have the luxury of sitting in stealth, and removing 1 condition every 3 seconds does nothing against condi bombs.

I’m all for more condition removal on thief – our current options are a joke. If you want Torment added to one of the heals though, you need to pick a “type” – either you consider it a damaging condition and stick it on HiS, or consider it a movement impairing condition and stick it on withdraw/rfi.

Prince.7198:

If this happens i can see the Stealth with pistol5 and cluster—> shortbow1 immob —> Pistolwhip/steal combos rolling.

This is actually an amazing example of how poor perceptions warp the idea of balance.

The combo you suggest costs a whopping FIFTEEN initiative, and steal.

Anyone who doesn’t understand how thief works (IE most of the people who post on the boards) will look at this description and scream OP! mindlessly.

Anyone who actually plays thief will realize that 15 init and steal for a single fully connected PW is a joke. Let’s also note that BP + cluster stealth relies on a target not being within the blast radius of the cluster bomb in the first place; it’s not impossible, but the thief doesn’t really have control over it and it won’t fly in alot of situations.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Test Servers: These are hard to do at the moment, and not something we will support for now. It takes a lot of manpower to manage another live environment and iteration on features in that environment takes a lot of extra lead time.

Unfortunately, test servers are probably the single most important change you need to implement.

So many of your implemented changes seem to require additional tweaks after they’ve been live for a month; best case scenario, those tweaks will come in 6 months, and some issues have remained for over a year without being addressed.

I’m not going to pretend that a test server is free, but I imagine the benefits will eventually pay for themselves. The only changes that need extensive testing are PvP oriented changes, so the server could simply be an instance of the mists. Instead of having to spend development resources to tweak things you’ve literally just introduced/tweaked because they aren’t performing as you expected (look at the thief trait changes as just 1 example), you could work all that out on the test realm and deploy the properly balanced version.

It’s also worth noting that 6 months between balance patches will be easier for the community to swallow if they’re aware of constant balancing going on for those 6 months.

If you have to, charge people a fee (gems, gold, real money, whatever) to access to the test server. It’s not the best solution, but it’s better than no test server at all.

With the upcoming changes, the FS/LS chain should definitely return to 2 boons stolen.

When the init was 3/1 FS/LS and LS stole 2 boons, it still took 2-3 LS’s (And Bountiful theft) to strip a boon bunker – unless they were standing completely still, that could easily take 15-20 seconds. It served a purpose without being OP.

Now that the init cost has increased (as of patch it’ll be 4/1) And you have to land FS before LS can occur, LS should return to removing 2 boons (or 1 boon strip on both FS and LS)

Platanos.8107:

Let’s see how spammy these classes are.
For a P/D, you can only spam in quick succession 2, 3, 4 and NOT 5 (Heart seeker , shadow shot, head shot).
Every other profession? They can spam 2,3,4,5 in quick succession.

Long term? Let’s see.

Average initiative cost for an attack is 4 initiative (it’s actually 4.4 initiative, but let’s round it down cause we don’t want thieves to seem underpowered). We regenerate 1 initiative per second. So starting with everything on cool down, that is .25 attacks (not auto attack) per second. 0.227 attacks per second if we use 4.4 initiative. Let’s take greatsword warrior for example cause we all hate warriors too.
Burst, 10 seconds. HB, 8 second. Whirlwind attack, 10 second. Bladetrail, 15 second. Rush, 20 second. That is .44 attacks per second (.342 attacks per second if you didn’t know you had an F1 skill that does something). If you guys weapon swap, oh my goodness, it’s as if someone just entered a cheat code.

Just as warriors can trait for lower CDs, so can thieves regain initiative. How do thieves regain more initiative? Steal. That’s 2 extra initiative every 25-35 seconds. Barely anything.

Every single profession can spam skills faster than thieves can (unless it’s heart seeker or dancing dagger, but that is it), just not the same skill over and over.

Some of you guys are like, shadow shot OP! I dodge the first one, and then he shoots me again, and I’m out of endurance. Ok, the thief just used 8 initiative out of 12. If they are going trickery, that just means they are doing less damage. Are you guys really going to be auto attacked to death?

The only thing thieves are better at than every single other profession is their ability to use an attack more than once. What other professions do better is their ability to spam their attacks faster than a thief can.

I just showed you how a profession can basically use their attacks about 1.75 times more often without even swapping weapons. Even a warrior with a hammer can spam skills faster than a thief can. Look up weapon skills for each profession, tell me which one can’t attack more than once every 4 seconds.

I’m not saying that other professions are OP, I just want to show you guys that in my opinion, it is a good tradeoff, using half as many skills as any other professions can, but being able to spam a skill multiple time.

If you guys think there’s something wrong with what I wrote, or there are anything else you think make thieves too OP, reply, and I’ll either agree with you, or try to prove how it isn’t OP.

On topic: If a thief can’t catch someone, and if a thief can no longer burst anyone in 3 seconds, and a thief is squishy, and a thief can’t support anyone unless they go that kittenty venom share, what is a thief supposed to be good at? Are they supposed to be good at trolling? Giving out legendaries from their dead bodies? I’m pretty sure that a thief carrying a Banner of Strength everywhere so people will always get the aura is better than venom share.

Thieves pros: good dps, good mobility, stealth. Consistent Might, vigor, fury, regeneration, bleed, poison, torment, vulnerability, immobilize (1 second, lol). If you want to talk about S/D, replace good dps with being able to steal other people’s boons.

Thieves cons: No team support, low hp, low armor. No other conditions or boons. No boon removal. Subpar condition removal. Don’t underestimate how squishy thieves are.

It’s so sad that this write up will be completely ignored, because it’s mostly spot on.

My only complaints are “no boon removal” in thief cons – almost everyone is running bountiful theft because…why wouldn’t you? Steal is crap (relative to other class mechanics) until you dump 4-5 traits into it, at which point it becomes fairly powerful. Bountiful theft also supplies some team support, though not on the level of other classes.

Also, Regeneration and torment don’t feel like something thieves have “good” access to – some access yes, but nothing special. “Dont underestimae how squishy thieves are” is vague, spell it out – no blocks, no invulns, no access to protection, Lowest base HP, no practical access to stability. Poor sustain, Zero bunker ability (which basically pidgeonholes thieves into burst specs)

Shockwave.1230:

Rasalhague.8270:

Thief cooldowns should be doubled and initiative removed.

Aka, All weapon skills = auto attacks

I concur. Let’s remove init entirely and make all thief weapon skills 0s CD, as this brave soul has suggested.

Huzzah for standing up for the class you believe in Rasalhague.

CptnDrunk.8361:

Dancing Dagger is fine although id like a small bleed added on to it.

Death Blossom just needs its timing reworked like stated above. D/D condi thieves played right are deadly!!!

P/D isn’t cheese. Been using it since launch and finally got a few buffs. D/P is cheese >.>

D/D condi thieves “played right” have exactly one skill that does condition damage!

That’s awful, awful design.

Eliesume.1687:

evilapprentice.6379:

crouze.3078:

what other skills do you want to use to kill something?
s/p you have your auto attacks for damage. Pistol Whip doesn’t deal that much more damage
d/p you use heartseeker / backstab (3 initiative). so you could still use blackpowder + heartseeker every 9 seconds.

Reducing the duration to 2 seconds wouldn’t make it completely useless. I think it would increase the build variety we see on thieves.

Why yes of course, I forgot that IS, head shot,Unload,pistol whip and shadowshot have absolutely no value.

You also forgot to address how BP does not actually stop anyone from Meleeing you (since they can stand outside the circle and hit you regardless where you stand in it).

Unless of course you’re talking PvE, and in that case, who cares? PvE content is designed to be completed by almost anyone (That’s the draw of it). If it was really that detrimental to PvE, they could have split it like they have other skills – there’s no reason to make it awful in PvP because mobs are coded to stand in AoEs.

That’s really a biased defense I keep hearing repeated. Yes, technically, you can be on the edge of the circle to land damage inside the BP, but no Thief would just sit there and take it. I mean, my immediate response would be to #2 stealth away and send opponent into fight or flight panic mode. Besides it’s hard enough to keep track of all damages flying in and out, not to mention to make sure you’re on the edge of the circle and not too close.

The farthest you could possibly be from your target while standing in BP is 90’. Considering standard melee range is 130’, you’ve got 40’ left over – let’s not pretend you have to skirt the very bleeding edge of the circle to actually hit anyone. Of course you’d know that if you were speaking from experience rather than parroting opinions.

And as far as Stealthing goes, how does that apply? The proposed BP change does absolutely nothing to change that functionality.

I agree with OP, the nerf is probably warranted. Another example, would be Hammer Warriors’s F1/#4 combo, either they are blinded on BP shot, or blinded jumping into the field, and follow up with their second skill are blinded too. However, I’d admit it’s at least half luck and half skill to anticipate that. This would go for any melee combo. A tally of 6 ini cost, 4 ini on regen while in field. For 2 ini cost, or 2s cooldown , I could mitigate nearly all melee attacks and condi.

With the radius on Earthshaker, you could aim off to the side of the thief so you don’t land directly in the BP – either way, you’re still eating the shot itself (Again, unaffected by the proposed changes). And you have Zerker stance.
Your assertion that BP “only costs 2 ini because you can sit in it for 4s” is laughable – if all a thief is doing is hitting BP, then AAing from it, he’s a dead or useless thief. Please, learn something about a class before you choose to express your extremely inaccurate opinion concerning it’s abilities.

And it’s sure as hell broken OP in PvE play.

So nerf it in PvE.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Yes, but the way that iniciative gain is now, thats is not even a average penalty. I can use Shadow shot 5/6 times in a row so i can miss about 4 and still have defenses left.

The sword one is even more easy to spam, i can spam it 8 times until i stay out of iniciative and in the end i’m away in safety.

Please actually know the class you claim to play before posting comments about it.

Shadow shot costs 4 initiative. There isn’t a spec in the game that can fire it 5/6 times in a row, neither is there aspec that can fire it 4 times and still have initiative left over for “Defenses”.

IS/IR combo requires 5 initiative – much like the 20 init spec, there is no 40 init spec.

You either
A) Have no idea how the class works
B) Do not have a strong enough argument to support your case without resorting to extreme hyperbole.

In either case, please stop spreading misinformation, it only hurts the game.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Currently if you drop BP on Warrior/Engi/Ranger/Guardian/Necro there’s almost nothing they can do about it.

There’s absolutely nothing a Warrior/Engi/Necro can do, but Ranger/Guard can easily clear the blind with their 1 skill and hit their interrupt, as long as they pay attention. 3/8 safe stomp for half a standard initaitive bar is a much different argument than 5/8ths.

crouze.3078:

what other skills do you want to use to kill something?
s/p you have your auto attacks for damage. Pistol Whip doesn’t deal that much more damage
d/p you use heartseeker / backstab (3 initiative). so you could still use blackpowder + heartseeker every 9 seconds.

Reducing the duration to 2 seconds wouldn’t make it completely useless. I think it would increase the build variety we see on thieves.

Why yes of course, I forgot that IS, head shot,Unload,pistol whip and shadowshot have absolutely no value.

You also forgot to address how BP does not actually stop anyone from Meleeing you (since they can stand outside the circle and hit you regardless where you stand in it).

Unless of course you’re talking PvE, and in that case, who cares? PvE content is designed to be completed by almost anyone (That’s the draw of it). If it was really that detrimental to PvE, they could have split it like they have other skills – there’s no reason to make it awful in PvP because mobs are coded to stand in AoEs.

crouze.3078:

Base Initiative regeneration let’s you use a 4 sec smoke field every 6 seconds.

If you do nothing else but use BP. Who exactly are you killing with AA?

More importantly, how is BP protecting you while you spam this AA? If you are in range of your target, your target is in range of you without touching BP. In fact, no matter where you stand in BP, melee can attack you without touching the circle and being blinded.

Tl;dr – standing outside small circles ruled untenable for todays GW2 player; small circles nerfed